AFI, The Fray, Charlatans UK, LIVE, Death Cab For Cutie, Snow Patrol, Neko Case, and let's not forget LOLLAPALOOZA ($140 a pop) and lots of others I'm positive I've forgotten for the moment.

There are several things that need to be done around the house...the sprinklers heads Tom tried to help me find the other day have been found...but it seems the sprinkler system is in need of repair (ka-ching), the system needs to be flushed (ka-ching), several of the sprinkler heads are broken (ka-ching) and the lawn, which has made me the slacker of the neighborhood needs to be roto-tilled and replanted (ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching).

The concert whore that I am is in deep conflict with the happy homeowner that I am.

What to do?

Ponder on it and we'll see what the estimate is after the sprinkler guys visits me on Tuesday.

In the meantime, the actions I took to pick up the 40# of you-know-what yesterday have resulted in me not being able to walk today. I envision a new exercise...c'mon everyone, let's do the 'Pooper Stooper'. So I'll take a breather at picking up the remaining 1/4 of the backyard and instead will tackle re-arranging my office (the feng shui is non-existant and it's bumming me out to work in there on a daily basis) then it's on to de-cluttering the garage.

So what if my lawn looks dead, the inside of my garage will be pristine and organized.

11:25 pm update =

Garage looks 10 times better. All the moving boxes that I was saving for Tom's move have been turned over to him, so the remainder of the boxes will be broken down tomorrow and Tuesday to go out for recycling on Wednesday...unless any of you need moving boxes and in that case, come n' get 'em! Rearranged and organized to my heart's content and watered the back, front and side yard when I was finished in the garage.

My office, while not the way I really want it to be as a finished product, is a lot better as well. Have to set up the fax and printer that I was supposed to set up the first day I started working from home...and just haven't gotten around to it yet, which leads me to believe I really DON'T need a fax and printer but since they gave it to me I probably should set it up, ya think?

Found a bunch of pix from back in the day while cleaning out my office closet...pix of my Gramma, my cousin Neal (both of whom have passed away), my beloved Maxi (also now in heaven) and pix of all 5 of us kids one random Christmas....Diane, Brian, Kelly and Pat all playing with toys and me with my nose stuck in a book. Nice memories and not much has changed, other than I now do most of my reading online...oh, and I don't celebrate Christmas anymore :)

Friday, 28 April 2006

What does Shmeder win? Have no idea, but I'll do the payoff sometime next week when she is out of school and will be itching (ha ha, read her last post) for something fun to do.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Now I gotta go pick up dog poop that the former owners never cleaned up before they moved. Gross, I know, but it's gotta be done before Thursday, cause I made Tom a bet that it would be done before he came back from UT otherwise I would pay him $100.

Thursday, 27 April 2006

This Saturday at 8ish come out for The Nancy Drews at Old Curtis Street Bar, near 21st street.
Am tellin' ya, it's much better to see the ND's now, up close and personal, rather than waiting in line when they hit big-time.

Wow...that rhymed! LSE, feel free to take it and run with it, dude!

It'll be rockin', it'll be almost free (small cover), it'll be the place to be. Damn. Another rhyme. Not trying, really I'm not.

So get off your asses, join the masses, raise some glasses and grab some lasses.
Ok, I tried that time. Sue me.

See ya there!

[update from LSE: the first band's not going to go on until probably 9:30 though, which means we'll go on at around 10:30, fyi.].

HDW, I'm still down for getting there at 8-ish...what say you? Hubs? LSE? Anyone else? I'm flex, so let me know if I need to readjust my ETA.

Used to have a black journal that had that phrase inscribed on the front in white lettering. Bought it on my first trip to Boston and saved it for several years, wanting to wait for that one perfect motivational experience on which to journal my scary days. When I got a personal trainer, it fit the bill. Over 16 weeks my trainer religiously documented each session. It never failed to crack me up that he spelled 'cardio' as 'carido'. He was a trainer, not an English teacher. After 16 weeks I was down 46#, looking good and feeling great. Then my trainer misplaced the book and I had rotator cuff issues from moving into my new house that I'd just bought.

The book is gone, but the phrase still remains with me to this day.

Tonite I took the first of many steps to do something that ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIES ME. Beyond scary. Yet, it's something I want to do and I think once I get over my initial fear/terror/anxiety of doing it, I'll actually like it a little bit...or maybe a lotta bit.

Wanna know what it is? Sure? Ok, here goes.

Cousin Bill, you might want to sit down and don't partake of anything liquid while reading this cause you just might spit it out after reading the next sentence.

Have always wanted to be a good cook and over the last year have religiously watched the Food Network, but when push comes to shove, I just can't do it. Used to hate to cook but did it anyway. I want to get from hating it to enjoying it to actually being half-way decent at it...and not end up sending my boyfriend's brother to the emergency room like I did back in college when I decided to cook for Murlin (bf) and Milo (his bro) one night.

So there you have it...I'm gonna start cooking. It's gonna scare the crap out of me, but that which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Or something like that.

Sunday, 23 April 2006

...this weekend was no exception. It never ceases to amaze me that Monday thru Friday drag by slo-mo then fast forward warp speed from 3:31 Friday to Sunday night.

Coheed and Cambria & AvengeSevenfold concert was fun...we got there after the first band had ended so we didn't get to hear them. It was general admission and we managed to snag some decent seats, had a couple beers and foot long hotdogs and decided half-way thru Avenge that we were good to go (we'd really come to see C&C) so we headed off to the Celtic Room (after having our picture taken by the C&C street team cause T asked about the C&C poster they were carrying down the street) and that ended my Friday night.

Saturday was sleep in late day, shop for flowers day, Costco run day, lunch at Red Robin with endless fries day and finally watering my backyard day since it dawned on me that I have no idea how to run the sprinkler system that came with my house and the lawn wasn't gonna get any greener unless it either rained or I watered it.

So I watered my lawn for the first time and yeah, it was a nice feeling of satisfaction and home-ownershippy pride...and a teensy bit of guilt since I have the potential for a killer backyard but I am too lazy/uninterested/clueless on what to do to and when.

See, in FL you don't even have to water your lawn cause it's FL and rains all the time. And here in Denver, there are seasons to do this and seasons to do that. Like watering lawns, I have to get with the program and develop and implement a plan. Or, I could just tear up the grass and put in huge flagstones, a firepit with chairs around in, a hammock, and a trellis or two on which I could train night-blooming jasmine...if it even grows here...who knows cause I don't.

I digress.

After watering the lawn I left for the previously blogged about The Vanity/Hoobastank concert.
Then today, well, today was supposed to be a day of fun and sun and Rockies baseball and I wound up staying home due to my vision problem mentioned in my last post, not going out ONCE, basically being a hermit and only talking with T (about the hail) and the ex-roomie on the ex-roomie's favorite subject...himself!

Finished the last of my LOST Season 1 DVD's (the whole 'behind the scenes stuff' which I totally love). Wasn't totally hungry so had a most unhealthy dinner of tortilla chips and mango/peach salsa with Diet Pepsi (Wild Cherry, if you must know) and can I just tell you how YUMMY the Cost Plus Mango/Peach Salsa is? OMG...very yummy!

Did all my laundry, cleaned out and re-organized my bathroom cabinets and drawers, and that was the extent of my not-so-exciting day...pretty boring, actually!

And now it's almost midnite and I'm sad.
Fun week ahead...hike and bbq after work tomorrow, T closes on his new house Tuesday and leaves for Coachella on Weds (and I'm beyond jealous) and lots of other stuff I'll blog about as it gets closer, but for now, I'll mourn the loss of my weekend.

Yeah, we had to sign up on the internet...or not (depending on who you talked to) and yeah, had to stand in line for over two hours (no big deal) in the midst of a group of 15 NON-STOP SMOKERS (huge big deal that resulted in cigarette ashes gettting blown in my eyes twice which resulted in my left eye being swollen shut this morning and made me miss the Rockies game but I'm not gonna go down that road right now) and yeah, sitting in back of a group of 10 smokers at the concert that kept smoking despite repeated attempts from security to get them to stop smoking, blah blah blah.

So while I didn't have to shell out any money to get in, and was Respiratorily&Visually-incovenienced by the inconsiderate concert goers around me, it was a free show to end all shows. Hoobastank played like it was their last show on earth.

Lots of old favorites and the new stuff they played really rocked as well. Their new CD 'Every Man For Himself' comes out 15 May and you can bet I'll be at T&S to get my very own copy on the 15th.

The Gothic was a great place to see them...very intimate, great sight lines and sitting just feet from the bar wasn't too shabby at all.
Would love it if more bands did the 'free show' thing...a nice give back to loyal fans and probably an excellent marketing strategy.

On the way back to my truck, walked down the block with a family of 4...Dad, Mom and two kids around 8 and 10. The parents were psyched as were the kids...it was their FIRST rock concert and the fact that it was free enabled them to experience it as a family. Now THAT'S the type of family values I can relate to.

Saturday, 22 April 2006

Met Kamruz and the boys tonite when they ROCKED The Gothic big-time. Openers for Hoobastank, (more about them later) they played it hard, fast and tight. I'm not a music critic - far from it- but I know what I like and I really liked these guys. Was lucky enough to snag one of their demo CD's which I've already dowloaded to my iTunes and have been playing over and over and over.

There are a ton of great local bands here in Denver and The Vanity is a band you won't want to miss. If you're one of the unfortunates that didn't get to see tonite's show, you can check them out this Thursday (27 April) back at the Gothic . It'll be time and money very well spent.

Friday, 21 April 2006

Finished watching Lost DVD #6 'Exodus-Part2' and the ending totally scared the crap out of me! NONE of you guys are awake so I can't call and talk to you and get this scary endiing out of my mind yet if I go to bed now I'll have wicked nightmares.

So I'm watching DVD 7 and it's all stuff on the making of LOST...which is cool, but it's dawning on me that I will now have to wait for Season 2 to come out on DVD...and since Season 2 is still going, it won't be for awhile.
Can you see where I'm going with this?

LSE, silly question, but does LOST have reruns during the summer?? Yeah, I am hooked on it....didn't think I could get hooked on anything network again but it happened. Am so tempted to ask tons of questions but I really don't think I want the answers until I see it for myself.

Wednesday, 19 April 2006

My reticence to venture back into all things political is thawing. My self-imposed political hibernation since the drastic (pathetic?) results of 2004 is ending. Tonite, I got a taste of what it was like to be a Political Progessive once more. It tasted like beer. And I had fun.

Started at the LoDo Tattered Cover for a brief talk and book-signing by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, better known in the liberal blog world as Kos of DKos . In case you don't know me very well, Kos has been one of my political idols since late 2003. He was partly responsible for motivating me to start blogging. He is a rock star in the progressive blogosphere...and rightly so.

I MET KOS!.

He remembered me! A guy who has over 1 million people read his blog every day and Kos remembered me from when I used to be Team Stork's blogger on Daily Kos. WOW. Can you say blown away?

When he asked me if I was active in Denver (minutes earlier he'd asked me 'I thought you lived in Florida...what are you doing in Denver?) I said this past weekend when I signed up for Drinking Liberally was the beginning of me becoming active in Denver. Then he inscribed my copy of his book 'Crashing The Gate' with "Thanks for all your hard work on behalf of a progressive Dem Majority- Markos". Again, another WOW moment. This was just too much to take in all at once.

Afterwards headed over to Mario's Two Sisters, the regular meeting place of Drinking Liberally. Within minutes of arriving, started talking to other Progressives that had traveled far (em dash!) and wide (Avi from the Springs...hey Avile!) to see Markos and attend the meeting.

It was heaven, being around 'my type' once again. Even tho I had just met everyone, I felt at home.

From out of nowhere, my uber-cool stylist Alyssa appeared so we hung out and chatted with each other and Avi for the rest of the night...the place was packed and we were quite content snagging some of the few rare barstools in the bar.

Thanks Markos and kind folks at the Tattered Cover and John at Drinking Liberally for spearheading this event. It gives me hope that I can make a positive progressive difference in my new home town...it also gives me a reason to get active again.

Monday, 17 April 2006

Can we agree that what happened in Tel Aviv today was not the work of a suicide bomber.

No, it was the work of a HOMICIDE bomber. Someone that took great pains to murder as many innocent people as possible in the most painful way possible. Referring to them as suicide bombers puts the emphasis on them. They are terrorists, yes. Murderers, no doubt. And while they are committing suicide (yeah, that fact is not lost on me) let's focus on the bigger picture.

Homicide Bombers. Call them what they are.

And Chayale, if you are reading this, I hope and pray you and your family are safe.

As usually happens after a CD buying binge, several songs emerge as right-away favorites.

The clear winners of this last binge are 'She's An Angel' and 'Cyclops Rock' by They Might Be Giants and 'Stay' by Oingo Boingo. Awhile back, LSE blogged about YMBG's song 'Birdhouse In Your Soul', so I checked it out and liked it so much that I made it my ringtone. That led me to search out some TMBG's CD's, one of which I snagged Saturday night.

For lack of a better way to say it, 'She's An Angel' just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Love the melody, love the words, love the phrasing....love the way it makes me feel which is really really happy. 'Cyclops Rock' is the next song on the CD and while the tempo...and the words -duh- are different, the song has also grabbed me.

Went out for a drive in search of a specific Thai restaurant in Westminster today...haven't had Thai in ages and the last 4 times I did the experience ended badly since the food always made me sick...and while I was driving kept repeating the two songs over and over and over....to the point where if someone else would have been with me, they would have pleaded for me to play something different. Luckily, no one else was with me! Never found the Thai place I had in mind either, but it gave me more time to listen to my music.

The 3rd song du jour is 'Stay' by Oingo Boingo. OB memories are bittersweet. My brother Brian turned me on to them during a visit to his house back in the day when I lived in San Jose. Our whole family was hanging out in his backyard by the pool, with the designed-to-look-like-rocks-stereo speakers blasting OB...eating chips, drinking and just hanging out. Bri kept playing Stay over and over and over...guess it runs in the family, huh?

When I flew back to NorCal I went nuts buying whatever OB stuff I could get my hands on...and played everything ad nauseum for the rest of that summer.

When I divorced and we did the division of CD's, OB went away. And now they're back.

And so are the memories.

Happiness that music gives combined with memories of crashing poolside while enjoying SoCal sunshine, munchies, beer and hanging with your family...no wonder I've named this category My Legal Drug.

Saturday, 15 April 2006

Headed out to swing by Super Target and then grab dinner at Amazing Dave's.

Next thing I know, I'm at Twist and Shout and I'm looking at a lot of CD's. Then I start picking them up. One by one.

All of a sudden, I'm back in my vehicle.

Driving home, almost to the street that takes you to Cherry Creek after turning left (still not 100% on the main streets), before I remember that I was supposed to grab dinner...and supposed to hit Super Target.

Came home instead...figured since I spent (cough cough) close to $90, I had the equivalent of several dinners and a Target spree.

OF COURSE got a new WEEN addition 'White Pepper' and other goodies which I'll post on my LISTENING sidebar.

Was getting ready for my hair apt and noticed a wasp on my bathroom window. The window is above the tub and is purely decorative...doesn't open and it semi-high up on the wall. Noticed a wasp in the lower left corner and kept a wary eye on him/her since I am allergic to bees and wasps.

Thought I was in the clear since there was no movement. Whew.

And then it moved.

FUCK!

So I grabbed the first thing I thought of...hair spray. Paul Mitchell, no less. And tried to spray the shit out of him, hoping the spray would prevent him from moving so I could pick it up and throw it away. Nope, not that easy.

I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. Nothing.

FUCK!

So I grabbed the only other semi-toxic substance in the bathroom...the Oxyclean Spray Carpet Cleaner. Once again, commenced spraying the shit out of it. It slowed the wasp down, but it still continued to crawl around.

Desparate times call for desparate measures.

So I grabbed a role of paper towels and tried to wack him with the end...HE STARTED CRAWLING UP THE TUBE TO MY HAND.

FUCK! FUCK!!

By now I am screaming so many potty-mouth words it isn't funny. I put the roll of paper towels under the tub faucet and turn it on full blast after stuffing the top of the tube. The roll of paper towels melts once the water hits it and the MOTHERFUCKING WASP THAT WOULD NOT DIE crawls out of the bottom of the roll. And down the drain.

A HA!!

I close the drain in a heartbeat and for good measure push the soggy roll of paper towels on top of it. By now my heart is racing and I feel like I'm having a heart attack.

Am close to being late for my hair appt, so I flee the crime scene, get dressed and head out.

When I got back home crept into the bathroom expecting to see the wasp.Nope, the drain is still closed. Little gave me a great idea for making sure the wasp will drown once I open the the drain.

I'll probably try his idea...next month.

In the meantime, I am sooooo grateful to have a separate shower enclosure so I don't have to use my tub anytime soon.

Wednesday, 12 April 2006

Hung out with my buddy T last night to show him how to download the pix he took with my digital into his new Mac. He left at 1:30 and for some reason I couldn't get to sleep until after 3...color me too pooped to pop for most of the day.

It was still a GREAT day, tho! Placed 4 clients, 2 of them new, and should place 2 more by tomorrow. Good for them, good for my company, and yes boys and girls, very good for me as well. A very energetic day so the iPod has been ramped up from the second I woke up.

Had fallen into the trap of listening to 'Transatlanticsim' by Deathcab for Cutie for close to a week. While an AWESOME CD, it left me too 'emo'ed out' and I was starting to feel like I lost my 'edge'. Does that ever happen to you?

So, today it was back to Hoobastank, The Killers, Ween, Green Day...I definitely feel peppier than I have for the last week or so, even tho I only got 3 1/2 hours of sleep.

No Pesach plans..shoulda made them..chalk it up to procrastination. Next year tho, Pesach at my house. You're all invited!

Found the perfect restaurant to visit when you know that you won't be eating any leavened bread for the next 8 days...being that Pesach (Passover) starts tonite...Parisi is your place. Had attempted other visits but the line was always out the door...stopped by just before the dinner rush last night. The wait was worth it.

Only complaint was the the high volume of screaming babies. That's one thing good about hanging out in bars...no screaming babies, unless they are over 21.

Stopped by Lowe's afterwards in anticipation of finding WAVE petunia's. They won't be out for another week...awww :-( Grew them several years ago...they were awesome! Colorful, grow quickly, impossible for someone with a black thumb to kill....the PERFECT plant for me!

Seeing as I couldn't find any plants to spend my money on, came home and booked a trip to New Orleans to see my buddy Chris. He was supposed to be here for a concert this month, but political obligations arose. So I'm gonna go see him first and then his promised trip to CO will happen before the end of the year...or at least that's what he says and he knows I'm holding him to it!

Tuesday, 11 April 2006

For the record, I do believe in God. Also for the record, despite 12 years hard time in Catholic school, I have never believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God. I just didn't buy it...not once. These days I'm a Jew...have been practicing for the last 12 years.

That's why the above essay is so interesting. When I was married, my husband at the time was atheist. I used to ask him if he would finally believe in God when he died and went to heaven and hopefully I'd see him there. You see, my atheist ex-husband was one of the most humane, moral and ethical people I know. His actions weren't religion-based. And as nice and kind as I was...and hopefully still am...I was convinced that he'd be on the fast track to heaven way quicker than any religious person I knew.

Read it for yourself. You might agree or not, depending on your beliefs. Regardless of your beliefs, I do feel it's refreshing to see how another person's perspective shapes their world.

Great news - get to go to LOLLAPALOOZA, visit my cousin Bill and visit Chicago, one of my favorite cities.

Great news - got a raise.

Great news - one of my best buddies is buying a house.

Devastating kick-you-in-the-stomach-news - being told second hand how someone you consider to be one of your closest friends has not only said mean, horrible and uncalled for things about you, but has lied about your character to another mutual friend.